MATE

The MATE Desktop Environment is the continuation of GNOME 2. It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop environment using traditional metaphors for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. MATE is under active development to add support for new technologies while preserving a traditional desktop experience.

MATE applications

MATE is largely composed of GNOME 2 applications and utilities, forked and renamed to avoid conflicting with their GNOME 3 counterparts. Below is a list of common GNOME applications which have been renamed in MATE.

Installation

The mate group contains the core desktop environment required for the standard MATE experience.

The mate-extra group contains additional utilities and applications that integrate well with the MATE desktop. Installing just the mate-extra group will not pull in the whole mate group via dependencies. If you want to install all MATE packages then you will need to explicitly install both groups.

Accessibility

MATE is well suited for use by individuals with sight or mobility impairment. Installorca, espeak (Screen reader for individuals who are blind or visually impaired) and onboard (On-screen keyboard useful for mobility impaired users)

Before starting MATE for the first time, enter the following command as the user who needs accessibility features:

$ gsettings set org.mate.interface accessibility true

Once you start MATE, you can configure the accessibility applications via System > Preferences > Assistive Technologies, although if you need Orca, you will need to run it from the Alt-F2 run window in order to start getting speech.

Notifications

Tips and tricks

Enabling compositing

Compositing is not enabled by default. To enable it navigate to run System -> Preferences -> Look and Feel -> Windows -> General and click the tick box alongside Enable software compositing window manager. Alternatively, you can run the following from the terminal:

$ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general compositing-manager true

Enabling new window centering

By default, new windows are placed in the top-left corner. To center new windows on creation navigate to run System -> Preferences -> Windows -> Placement and click the tick box alongside Center new windows. Alternatively, you can run the following from the terminal:

$ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general center-new-windows true

Enabling window snapping

Window snapping is not be enabled by default, to enable it navigate to run System -> Preferences -> Windows -> Placement and click the tick box alongside Enable side by side tiling. Alternatively, you can run the following from the terminal:

$ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general side-by-side-tiling true

Show or hide desktop icons

By default, MATE shows multiple icons on the desktop: the content of your desktop directory, computer, home and network directories, the trash and mounted drives. You can show or hide them individually or all at once using gsettings.

Hide all desktop icons

$ gsettings set org.mate.background show-desktop-icons false

Hide individual icons

Hide computer icon:

$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop computer-icon-visible false

Hide user directory icon:

$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop home-icon-visible false

Hide network icon:

$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop network-icon-visible false

Hide trash icon:

$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop trash-icon-visible false

Hide mounted volumes:

$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop volumes-visible false

Replace false with true for the icons to reappear.

Use a different window manager with MATE

The marco window manager can be replaced with another window manager via either of the following methods:

You can autostart a window manager of your choice using mate-session-properties. This means that the autostarted window manager will replace the default window manager at login. Navigate to System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications. In the dialog click Add. The command should take the syntax wm-name --replace.

Change window decoration button order

and put menu, close, minimize and maximize in your desired order, separated by commas. The colon is used to specify on which side of the titlebar the window buttons will appear and must be used for the changes to apply.

Auto open file manager after drive mount

By default, MATE automatically opens a new file manager window when a drive is mounted. To disable this:

Spatial view in Caja

To ensure that each new folder opens in a new window (known as spatial view), open Caja's preferences dialog, click on the behaviour tab and tick the 'Open each folder in its own window' option. Alternatively, execute the following command which achieves the same effect:

$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.preferences always-use-browser false

Change font DPI setting

You can alter the DPI (dots per inch) of the fonts in MATE by right-clicking on the desktop and choosing Change desktop background > Fonts > Details > Resolution.

Change applications menu icon

By default, the applications menu icon is set to start-here. To use a different icon, copy your icon to a folder such as /usr/local/share/pixmaps and execute the following:

$ gsettings set org.mate.panel.menubar icon-name icon

where icon is the name of your icon. Do not include the file extension in the icon name. Finally, restart MATE Panel.

Panel speed settings

Hide/Unhide delay

To adjust the amount of time it takes for the panel to disappear or reappear when autohide is enabled, execute the following:

$ dconf write /org/mate/panel/toplevels/panel/(un)hide-delay time

where panel is either top or bottom and time is a value in miliseconds, e.g. 300.

Animation speed

To set the speed at which panel animations occur, execute the following:

$ dconf write /org/mate/panel/toplevels/panel/animation-speed value

where panel is either top or bottom and value is either "'fast'", "'medium'" or "'slow'".

Set the terminal for caja-open-terminal

The caja-open-terminal extension uses GSettings to determine which terminal to use - mate-terminal is the default. To change the terminal that will be used, run the following command

$ gsettings set org.mate.applications-terminal exec my-terminal

where my-terminal is the name of the terminal executable to be launched, for example: xterm.

Troubleshooting

Toggling compositing

Some software may have issues rendering graphics when working on an environment using the nvidia proprietary drivers and a compositing window manager.

To easily toggle the compositing feature, save the following script somewhere within the Home directory, e.g. ~/.scripts/compositing.sh:

Vertical sync for compositing

If your graphics driver does not support DRI3 (e.g. the Nvidia Proprietary driver), marco does not support vertical synchronization via OpenGL, which may cause video tearing with enabled compositing. [2] In this case, consider a different composite manager with OpenGL support such as Compton.

Consistent cursor theme

Use of gradient backgrounds with LightDM

If you wish to use the default MATE (1.8) Stripes background as the LightDM background as well so as to make for seamless transition from LightDM to MATE, you will find that it is runtime-constructed from a grayscale PNG upon which MATE layers a vertical blue-to-green gradient, something which LightDM does not currently support. If insistent, you can work around this by temporarily setting /org/mate/desktop/background/show-desktop-icons to false, either through the dconf-editor tool available from the System Tools menu or by running

$ gsettings set org.mate.background show-desktop-icons false

from the Alt-F2 Run Application dialog, then running killall mate-panel from said dialog and hitting Print Screen before the panel reappears. You are then presented with a Save As dialog for exactly that fully rendered, screen-sized PNG that you need for LightDM. Run

$ gsettings set org.mate.background show-desktop-icons true

to have your desktop icons reappear, if desired.

Enabling panel shadow

Due to a race condition, the panel shadow does not appear after logging in to the MATE desktop, even with compositing enabled. [3]

Disabling scroll in taskbar

A feature of the MATE panel window list is that windows can be scrolled through using the mouse or touchpad. This feature may be troublesome for some as there is potential for accidental, unintended scrolling through windows.

Whilst there is no way of disabling this feature through MATE's settings, this feature can be disabled by patching libwnck using the Arch Build System; in this case, rebuild libwnck with the following patch. For more information on rebuilding packages with patches applied, see Patching in ABS#Applying patches.

Logout/shutdown delayed by at-spi-registryd

When logging out or shutting down, you may find that you are presented with an A program is still running: at-spi-registryd.desktop popup. As a workaround, you can prevent at-spi-registryd from starting - see GTK+#Suppress warning about accessibility bus - though this may have an effect on some accessibility features.